By Editors,

if you want to be both amused and disgusted, go to friendster and look up adam richards. he is a boy who went to my high school. click on the picture of a guy and a girl next to each other. read his profile. then find his girlfriend’s profile. it’s pretty sickening and republican. he’s a gun toting crazy lifeguard republican. (my other friend sent it to me).

After the loss of his best friend to gang warfare, Samuel Lopez expresses his emotions on his friend and gangs in his powerful poem. Have the students read the poem on page 11 and study the illustration in order to answer the following:
Discussion Questions
• What were their first impressions after reading the poem? Were they angry? sad? indifferent?

• What do the students think of Sam’s portrayal and cartoon caricature of a clown for a gangbanger?

• What do they think Sam meant when he wrote “Yet others will follow through with gang tradition/To decrease our population as their final mission”?

• What do the students think about the illustration accompanying the poem? Do they believe it is a good representation of what was said in the poem?

• What other symbols are in the drawing that show up in the poem and Sam’s story?

• Do the students know of friends/family who have died because of gang warfare? How did they cope with the loss–by writing a poem like Sam did?